Raul d'Oliveira Sousa Leal

Born:   1 September 1886 in Lisbon, Portugal.

Died: 18 August 1964 in Lisbon, Portugal.

Raul d'Oliveira Sousa Leal (Henoch) was a writer, poet and Portuguese occultist. He was a friend of Fernando Pessoa. Raul completed his law course at the University of Coimbra in 1909. In 1914 he went into exile in France for political reasons.

From an autobiography:

At my parents' house I received a luxurious education, knowing all the sumptuousness and elegance; it was natural, therefore, that I wanted to maintain this life even if it descended to the greatest ignominy, all the more since my ambitions of luxury were always intense, my appetites and my greed unrestrained; for all this crushed me, because only ignominiously could I satisfy such ambitions, such delusional appetites, and I in no way wanted to shatter my dignity, always intact, always immaculate. Despite everything, I preferred misery and hunger!

During four horrible years of hunger and misery I was never able to be dismayed, and through my sufferings I always found the strength of soul necessary to work in my Work. How many times, full of cold and barely able to sustain myself, due to an absolute lack of food, I went up the sumptuous staircase of the Library of Madrid, so little heated in winter, to seek in the study of metaphysics the vague forgetting of my evils, and thus giving an expression superior to my existence!

He was one of the introducers of futurism in Portugal, publishing in the second issue of Orpheu magazine, the "vertiginous novel" Atelier, which he planned to integrate in an unpublished book entitled Devaneios e Hallucinações. A unique case in Portuguese literature, he wrote all his poetic work in French. He also planned to write, in 1923, the "metaphysical drama" O Incompreendido.

In 1916 he published in the magazine Centauro "The Adventure of a Satyr or the Death of Adonis" and in 1917, in the magazine Portugal Futurista, the article "L'Abstraccionisme Futuriste", about a painting by Santa-Rita Pintor. He also collaborated in the magazine Pirâmide (1959-1960), in Athena, published by Fernando Pessoa , and in the magazine directed by Almada Negreiros, Sudoeste (1935).

With the publication of Sodoma Divinizada in 1923, by Fernando Pessoa's publisher Olisipo, Raul Leal voluntarily entered the scandal known as "Literatura de Sodoma", regarding the 2nd edition of the poetry book Canções, by António Botto, published in previous year also from Olisipo publisher. Started with the review by Fernando Pessoa (António Botto and Ideal Estético in Portugal), inserted in No. 3 of Contemporânea magazine, from July 1922, the controversy involved, in addition to Pessoa and Leal, the journalist Álvaro Maia and Pedro Teotónio Pereira.

In March 1923, the editions of Canções e Sodoma Divinizada, as well as Decadência by Judith Teixeira, would be apprehended and later burned by order of the civil Governor of Lisbon. Raul Leal returned to the controversy by publishing the pamphlet A Lesson of Moral to the Students of Lisbon and the Discarding of the Catholic Church.